languageskillsiauh912fandomcom-20200214-history
92/2/2 Listening A.Amin javaheri
Listening History Advances in language learning over the past decades have led to significant changes in how listening is viewed. These are 3 approaches to learning and teaching listening: 1. Listening within an environmentalist approach: Up to the end of the 1960s, listening was viewed as a passive process with no role in language learning. This assumption stemmed from the environmentalist approach to language learning, which considered that learning a language was a mechanical process based on a stimulus-response pattern . In such an approach, listeners’ stimulus ''consisted in hearing L2 spoken words and the ''response ''involved identifying and organizing those words into sentences. Thus, listeners’ main role was simply based on the recognition and discrimination of sounds rather than the understanding of what they were listening to (Brown 1990).. Consequently, it was assumed that just by repeating, imitating and memorizing what listeners heard, listening comprehension took place. 2. Listening within an innatist approach : By the late 1960s, the status of listening changed from being considered just a merely mechanical process of habit formation to a more dynamic and mentalistic process. Comprehension was, therefore, a necessary step for language learning and listening was viewed as the primary channel by which access could be gained to L2 input, while in turn serving as the trigger for acquisition. in the early 1970s also developed a series of classroom teaching methodologies considering that learning a language was most effectively if the focus on production was introduced after listening to and understanding it . 3. Listening within an interactionist approach: By the late 1970s, the role of listening assumed greater importance due to significant shifts in a variety of research fields that shaped the interactionist approach to language learning . These changes were characterized by adopting an interactive, social and contextualized perspective to the language learning process. Under such an approach, it was claimed that listening should focus on a whole piece of discourse rather than listening to single words or short phrases spoken in isolation. However, a more dynamic and interactive process of meaning creation during the listening event was now emphasized under two main views of comprehension (Peterson 2001). On the one hand, the ''information processing ''view of listening claimed that comprehension of a given message only occurred when it was internally reproduced in the listeners’ mind. Such a view included two comprehension: 1. the Perception, Parsing and Utilization model (Anderson 1985), and 2. the Identify, Search, File and Use model. On the other hand, the ''constructivist ''view of listening emphasized the fact that listeners did not merely receive and process meaning, but rather constructed such meaning according to their own purposes for listening as well as their own prior knowledge. ' ' ' ' '''Teaching listening within a communicative competence framework' In this communicative competence construct, and given the primacy of listening for language learning, it can be assumed that focusing on this skill within such an approach will contribute to the development of L2 communicative ability. Discourse competence Discourse competence implies an understanding of how language operates at a level above the sentence. It involves knowledge of discourse features such as markers, coherence and cohesion as well as formal schemata in relation to the particular purpose and situational context of the spoken text. Thus, if listeners have to recognize and interpret what is heard in longer or interactive discourse, they need first to understand which discourse features have been used and why, and then relate them to the communicative goal and particular context of that piece of discourse. Linguistic competence Linguistic competence includes all the elements of the linguistic system such as aspects concerning grammar, phonology and vocabulary. Knowledge of these features set at the bottom level of the listening process is necessary for listeners to decode a given spoken text. On the one hand, listeners’ grammatical knowledge enables them to apply the rules of morphology and syntax to recognize the inflections on words as well as understand whether the sentences being heard are cohesively and coherently well formed. On the other hand, mastery of the phonological system is also fundamental in the listening comprehension process, since listeners need to know not only how words are segmented into various sounds, but must also understand aspects such as rhythm, stress, intonation, feature detection or metrical segmentation. Pragmatic competence Pragmatic competence involves an understanding of the function or illocutionary force of a spoken utterance in a given situation, as well as the sociopragmatic factors necessary to recognize not just what that utterance says, in linguistic terms, but also what it is meant by it. Intercultural competence Intercultural competence implies having knowledge of both cultural and non-verbal communicative factors in order to appropriately interpret a given spoken text. Strategic competence This competence involves the mastery of both communication and learning strategies that will allow listeners to successfully construct meaning from oral input. Thus, knowledge of different learning strategies, which have been classified as cognitive, metacognitive and socio-affective (O’Malley and Chamot 1990), and the ability to use them effectively has been considered of particular importance in L2 listening. ' ' Influences on listening instruction Accessibility of input Access to relevant and appropriately challenging input is a critical factor in listening development. 1. Functions of input: It is axiomatic that listening is the primary vehicle by which a person acquires an L2. Listening opportunities “provide the linguistic environment” or “set the stage” for acquisition. What must be acquired in L2 acquisition is a range of new knowledge and a multi-faceted set of skills for using this knowledge. 2. Factors that affect quality of input:1. Relevance 2.difficulty 3.research question 4.authenticity ' ' Top down processing '' '' Top down processing –activating background knowledge and expectations through lexical access– guides the listening process and provides connection with higher level reasoning. Top-down processing in listening refers to the use of expectations in order to infer what the speaker may have said or intended to say. Expectations come from pre-packaged patterns of background knowledge that we have stored in memory from prior experiences. An entire pattern of knowledge, or schema, consisting of hundreds of interlinked nodes in memory, may be triggered by recognition of just a single word or image. every time we read, listen to, or observe something new we create a new schema by relating one fact to another through a logical or semiotic link. In top down processing we have 3 parts: lexical access,activating schemata and research question. Bottom up processing '' '' Training in bottom up processing is an essential element in listening comprehension. Although influence of the L1 may prevent efficient bottom up processing (metrical segmentation and word recognition), specific training will promote better listening. Bottom up processing refers to a two-pass listening process: the first is to identify the overall phonological shape of the metrical unit (or phrase or pause unit) that the speaker utters and the second is for segmental decoding or breaking the metrical unit into individual words. Because these processes are nearly simultaneous and mutually informing, we experience them as a single process of “decoding. Its include: Components of bottom up processing,'' Feature detection, Metrical segmentation. ,'' Research questions. '' '' Learning how to listen using learning strategies ' ' 1. Materials: The material that the learners should be listening to should be spoken English,, the material should always be authentic, The material needs to be relevant to the needs of the learners in question, it should be motivate listener and level of difficulty of the material is important . 2.' Instruction:' the skills should be integrated, and in this case, certainly the skills of listening and speaking. In fact, if we acknowledge that most of the listening we do is in a dialogic, interactional setting and not monologue, then it is essential that these skills be integrated. Not only should speaking and listening be integrated, but I will also be making the case for teaching interactive listening strategies, which, in fact, bridge the gap between these two skills. I References ' ' 1. Current Trends in the Development andTeaching of the Four Language Skills 2. teaching by principle (douglas brown)